Man acquitted in hospital assault is arrested in theft, stabbing

Three days after a King County jury acquitted a 30-year-old Eastern Washington man of assaulting a nurse at Virginia Mason Medical Center, he was arrested by Seattle police for allegedly stealing a Seahawks sweatshirt and attacking a loss-prevention officer with a knife.

Patrick Page waived his first court appearance Monday, when a judge found probable cause to hold him on investigation of robbery for the alleged theft and knife attack Sunday outside a Rite Aid Pharmacy on Capitol Hill, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office.

On Tuesday, a judge set Page’s bail at $100,000.

Jail and court records show Page, who has last known addresses in Spokane and Wenatchee, spent more than four months in the King County Jail before he was released last Wednesday, the same day a jury found him not guilty of third-degree assault.

In that assault case, Page went to Virginia Mason on Sept. 6 to be treated for hallucinations and blisters on his feet and was placed in a psychiatric holding room, court records say. At the time, there was a state Department of Corrections warrant for his arrest for escaping community custody, as well as another felony warrant for his arrest, according to the records.

Dressed in a hospital gown, Page tried to leave Virginia Mason after staff told him that Seattle police had been notified of his warrants. He was accused of punching and biting a nurse who tried to stop him from leaving, according to the records.

At his Superior Court trial, he apparently argued that he used lawful force in self-defense during the hospital confrontation.

Just before 4 p.m. Sunday, Page allegedly stuffed a Seahawks sweatshirt into his backpack at the Rite Aid at 201 E. Broadway and walked out without paying, according to the statement of probable cause outlining the police case against him.

When he was confronted outside the store by a loss-prevention officer, Page is accused of pulling out a serrated knife wrapped in a white washcloth and jabbing the officer repeatedly in the head, the statement says.

The store employee suffered numerous superficial lacerations to his head, it says.

Page then allegedly dropped the knife, rag and sweatshirt and took off running toward Cal Anderson Park before a police officer found him hiding in a nearby stairwell, the statement says. Witnesses identified Page — who was wearing a Seahawks cap — as the man they had seen stabbing the loss-prevention officer, according to the statement.